Aegis of Earth: Protonovus Assault

I don’t know if I’m trying to make it a habit of reviewing games with ‘Assault’ in their title, if I am then I’m two for two so far. Going from combat flight simulator to a tower defense game is a relief. I’m thankful because I have experience with the tower defense genre, which gave me a little excitement going into Aegis of Earth: Protonovus Assault.

Getting into the game itself, Aegis of Earth takes place in a world just like ours but with one difference. The world was overrun by Godzilla sized creatures and humanity’s greatest population died in a ‘Silent’ Apocalypse brougt on by these creatures. That’s some difference, I don’t know about you but Gotham City is sounding like a great place to live now. In this world there is a lot of darkness but there is also a little light, and the discovery of a new element called altenite could be humanity’s last hope for survival.

Fifty years have gone by and the last of humanity have formed a new government to combat the monsters that have claimed so many lives. This new government has created city-states that are equipped with weapons to help protect the civilians. You’re inserted into the shoes of a newly promoted commander – sorry your character get’s no character design so just imagine yourself in a commander uniform. You’re in charge of the city-state in Kimberly, Australia and here you meet your crew that helps you throughout the game. Here you are introduced to my favourite part of the game, the character interaction – it’s amusing to see them make jokes at another’s expense in the dark world they live in.

Now it is time to get into my least favourite part of the game, the gameplay – I really dislike how Aegis of Earth‘s mechanics and, I’ll be honest, this is not a good game to play. You get into the tutorial part of the game and your crew teaches you how to play the game. You play on a radius-map with the city-state itself at the focus in every strike. Your crew tells you that the city-states are split into four zones, with the first three zones equipped with weapons while the last zone is on the more defensive side with barricades to stop monsters from coming into the city-state.

The control you have in-game is very limited, as commander you don’t get to shoot enemies; that’s your crew’s job. The zones are adjustable at your command when enemies come from whatever direction and that’s all you can do in the game. Later on in the game, as you travel to other city-states in the world with your crew, you earn the ability to use a big weapon that has one time use per strike. It’s usually only used when bosses attack your city-state, using it on anything else lesser than that is a waste.

Playing this game reminds me a little of Sim City with the ways you can make the city-state’s population happy. Doing this can range from constructing a new unit for the area to putting on pool party at the local water park. The customization in this game reminds me a lot of Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker – there is even a scientist in the R&D department that has plans for bigger and better units that need your approval. I see a lot more game inspirations too but it gets in the way and doesn’t make this game really unique or innovative at all.

I know I said I only enjoyed the character interaction in the game earlier on in this review, but there is one other thing I can complement the game on and that is the voice cast. I’m the type of person that needs to listen to the original Japanese voice cast in any anime or video game. In this game the default voice cast is English and there is no option to change that. As I went through the game I minded this less and less, the voice overs in this game are really good and I surprisingly enjoyed my time listening to the performances of the voice cast.

I’m not one for graphics but even I can tell the graphics in this game look like a PS2 game; it looks way worse on other platforms too. The soundtrack in the game is pretty generic. As far as replay value goes this whole game is a very repetitive game that gets boring real quick after the fifth strike. It’s very hard to find reasons why you should play this game, if you value your time you should spend it on something else that you can appreciate more than this game; I mean it took me five weeks to beat it and I feel like I wasted my time.

Aegis of Earth: Protonovus Assault is a bad tower defense game and a bad game overall. It’s really hard to recommend this game so you shouldn’t even think of buying it – you would be wasting your money and time. I got the platinum in this game and I don’t want anyone to go through the same pain that I did when playing this game. The only thing going for it is the characters themselves in their very anime setting, this makes for a good anime but not a good video game. With the lack of graphics, gameplay and innovation in this game it’s unbelievable that this game came out in 2016.

REVIEW OVERVIEW

Presentation

Gameplay

Lasting Appeal

Execution

SUMMARY

Aegis of Earth: Protonovus Assault is a tower defense game that may have trouble appealing to fans of the genre. It had unique ideas but the game wasn't executed that well. The characters and the voice cast are the only positive attributes but it's hard to recommend any game on that alone.

Dennis has been gaming ever since he was given a controller at the age of 4 and he has never let go since. PlayStation is his bread and butter, he also has trophy addiction but we don't like to bring that up. Dennis has been supporting the Vita since he got one at launch and plays any cross buy title exclusively on it.

This game seems to have a love it or hate it vibe. Most reviewers don’t care for it, while most consumer reviews do. Also, I think it’s unfair to knock the game for not letting you directly attack enemies. This is common in most tower defense games, almost by definition.

I still have my launch copy sealed, mainly because I haven’t gotten around to it yet, but now I want to try it (I like the demo).

ADL

And I think you’ll like it. I got the platinum and clearly wasn’t in pain. I liked it. 🙂